How to Build a Financial Plan That Holds Up When Life Doesn't SB1818

Summary

---

The Stacking Benjamins Show: How to Build a Financial Plan That Holds Up When Life Doesn't (SB1818)

Release Date: March 20, 2026
Hosts: Joe Saul-Sehy, Paula Pant, OG (absent, replaced by guest Paul Merriman), Jesse Kramer
Guest Expert: Paul Merriman
Theme: Building "All Weather" financial plans and portfolios that can withstand life's unpredictable challenges.

---

Episode Overview

This episode dives into the concept of building an "all weather" financial plan—one that endures market swings, economic shocks, personal setbacks, and everything in between. The hosts, along with special guest Paul Merriman (respected investor and educator), unpack the psychology of chasing "shiny" high-return investments versus building robust, resilient money systems. They discuss asset allocation, risk management, behavioral pitfalls, and the practical steps you can take to make your finances stormproof.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Do We Chase Shiny Investments? ([14:58–19:24])

• Paula Pant: Discusses the allure of flashy investments—just like sports cars symbolize success, hot assets (like crypto or AI stocks) become shortcuts in our minds for financial success. The stories of big wins reinforce this mindset, despite survivorship bias.
• Jesse Kramer: Emphasizes the role of comparison and benchmarking. Many investors measure their performance against headlines (e.g., the S&P 500) without considering if those benchmarks are relevant to their goals.
  • Quote: "If you're about to retire and your portfolio...is 60/40, and you're comparing yourself to the S&P 500, that's a benchmarking issue..." (17:10)
• Paul Merriman: Warns of the dual dangers: people taking too much risk chasing past winners and people being too afraid to take any risk.

---

2. Risks of Chasing Trends & the 'Lottery Ticket' Mentality ([19:24–22:11])

• Paul Merriman: Even when someone wins with a risky bet or the lottery, it’s a bad lesson. Teaching the next generation to count on those “lottery ticket” moments is damaging.
  • Quote: "The worst thing to do is to teach a kid how to play the stock market game in high school, and he wins. Now they think the way to invest is the way that stock market game turned out. That’s a terrible lesson." (20:11)
• Paula Pant: Differentiates between leaning into genuine society-changing trends (like the Internet or AI) and attempting to pick specific winners, which is near impossible.

---

3. Defining & Building an 'All Weather' Portfolio ([22:31–27:05])

• Jesse Kramer: Explains the Ray Dalio “All Weather” approach—diversification across asset classes (stocks, bonds, gold, commodities) to withstand macroeconomic risks (inflation, deflation, recession, etc.).
• Paul Merriman: Shares his approach—diversified "ten fund strategy" split evenly across US/international, large/small, value/growth equities, and a balanced stock/bond allocation (50/50). Notes the biggest risk: market timing, not asset selection.
  • Quote: "The problem is when people start market timing...when they start moving to international, typically the time they move is when it's been on a run already." (25:49)
• Paula Pant: Explains how indexes "self-clean." As winners grow, you own more of them, and as companies fade, they're gradually replaced—no hand-weeding required.

---

4. All Weather Money: Beyond Portfolios ([27:05–30:44])

• Cash & Flexibility: Paula hammers the importance of emergency cash, insurances, and overall financial 'defense.' People often resent cash yields during bull markets, but regret not having reserves during downturns.
  • Quote: "Cash is king, right? Nothing is more important than it." (27:43)
• Behavioral Defense: Jesse highlights the need for introspection about risk and understanding the threats unique to your situation, not just focusing on market doom scenarios.

---

5. Risk Tolerance & Investor Psychology ([30:44–34:16])

• Paul Merriman: Argues every investor should build their plan as though a bear market starts tomorrow and be emotionally/financially prepared to lose a sizeable portion of their portfolio.
  • Quote: "Every person...should all expect that tomorrow starts the worst bear market in their life. They should be built from day one to expect bad things." (31:16)
• Risk Management: Disability and unforeseen life shocks are often neglected but can have devastating effects. Paul stresses adequate insurance and risk assessment beyond just portfolio returns.

---

6. Biggest Retirement Shocks & Withdrawal Pitfalls ([51:17–53:59])

• Paul Merriman: The biggest real-life financial shocks he's seen weren't market-related but due to being underinsured (e.g., post-accident lawsuits) or overspending (withdrawal rates of 6-7%+).
  • Quote: "The biggest one I saw was being underinsured and getting in a car accident...it wiped them out. They didn't have the umbrellas that they needed." (51:17)
• Illusions of Safety: Many overestimate safe withdrawal rates by assuming unrealistic future returns, leading to running out of money.

---

7. Coping With Job Loss & AI Anxiety ([54:49–56:40])

• Jesse Kramer: Emergency funds offer a practical if temporary buffer. Consider skills less susceptible to automation, and always have a networking/resume back-up plan. Thinking ahead about fallback options is crucial.

• Paula Pant: Underscores the importance of negotiation skills—not as confrontation, but collaborative problem solving. Negotiate on many fronts (salary, benefits, flexibility), and understand what matters to the other party.

---

8. Behavioral Biases and The Danger of Chasing Winners ([59:16–66:37])

• Paul Merriman: Discusses "recency bias"—the tendency to assume what's hot now will stay hot and the related danger of abandoning diversification for flashy returns. Advising is as much about stopping people from making mistakes as it is about choosing investments.
  • Quote: "One market timing mistake can cut your retirement in half for a lifetime—one." (61:53)
• Jesse Kramer: Shares a client story—panic-selling at the market's bottoms (e.g., COVID-19 crash) leaves "scars" on portfolios that can never be reversed.
• Doug: The "crash the plane" exercise—deliberately list everything that could ruin your plan, then simply don’t do those things.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Paul Merriman: "Every person should expect that tomorrow starts the worst bear market in their life." (31:16)
• Paula Pant: "Cash is king, right? Nothing is more important than it." (27:43)
• Jesse Kramer: "If we wanted to screw this up as royally as we possibly could to make sure this plane crashes, ... there are so many things. Then all you do... is just put ‘don’t’ in front of that." (63:29)
• Paul Merriman: "One market timing mistake...can cut your retirement in half for a lifetime." (61:53)
• Paula Pant: "Negotiation is a form of creative collaboration." (58:01)
• Paula Pant: On behavioral finance: "Your beliefs shape your reality." (69:47)

---

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Shiny Investments & Their Psychology: 14:58–22:11
• All Weather Portfolio Definitions & Strategies: 22:31–27:05
• All Weather Money: Cash, Flexibility, Insurance: 27:05–34:16
• Trivia Segment (skip): 34:16–51:17
• Biggest Retirement Shocks & Withdrawal Issues: 51:17–53:59
• Job Loss & AI-Proofing Your Career: 54:49–56:40
• Negotiation As a Key Defensive Skill: 56:40–58:12
• Behavioral Biases & Avoiding Costly Mistakes: 59:16–66:37

---

Final Takeaways

• Preparation for Downturns: Always plan for the worst-case scenario—whether it’s in your portfolio or your life.
• Prevention Over Prediction: Diversification, risk assessment, and behavioral discipline are more effective than trying to pick winners or time the market.
• Defense Matters: Emergency reserves, adequate insurance (especially umbrella and disability), and careful withdrawal rates are foundational.
• Behavioral Mastery: Know the psychological traps—recency bias, overconfidence, envy—and actively guard against impulsive moves.
• Holistic Strategy: An all-weather financial plan is about more than investments; it’s about defense, flexibility, adaptability, and having the skills to negotiate your way through storms.

---

Discover More

• Paul Merriman’s Boot Camp: Free, comprehensive educational resources on building resilient portfolios (paulmerriman.com).
• Afford Anything Podcast (Paula Pant): Upcoming episodes on behavioral finance and the psychology of money.
• Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors Podcast (Jesse Kramer): Recent episode on Monte Carlo simulation for retirement planning.

---

Transcript

[Paula Pant]

This episode is brought to you by Indeed.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate.

[Paula Pant]

Instead, use Indeed sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate. C. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Ugh. You said you were over him, but his hoodie's still in your rotation. It's time. Grab your phone, snap a few pics, and sell it on depop. Listed in minutes with no selling fees. And just like that, a guy 500 miles away just paid full price for your closure. And right on cue.

[Jesse Kramer]

Hey, still got my hoodie?

[Paula Pant]

Nope. But I've got tonight's dinner paid for. Start selling on depop, where taste recognizes taste list. Now with no selling fees, payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details. You know, I don't understand this podcasting thing. How come you boys can't have those keg parties and chase the girls like all the other nice boys do? Y' all are nerds.

[Doug]

Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and you've heard of all weather tires. You might have heard of all Weather driving, but how about creating all weather money systems? How would that look? One CFP recently wrote about it, and today we're going to share our ideas to help you make your money. All Weather. But that's not all. As the first quarter draws to a close, we ask ourselves, will Paula get on the board before Q2? Today's her last shot at winning. My trivia question. And now a guy who who likes to shoot money into investments every chance he gets. It's Joe Saul Sei.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Hey there, stackers, and happy Friday to you. Let me be the first one to welcome you to the Stacky Benjamin Show. I'm super happy you're here. Sit back, relax. Don't relax too much, because we're going to help you create an all weather portfolio. Today, we're going to solve all that with a great band of contributors and a guy who says it much better than I do. Mom's neighbor Doug is here. How are you, man?

[Doug]

I am here. I can't wait for this episode, because this episode speaks to my soul. It's not about how fast can your investments grow. It's building something that's really rugged. And really durable. It's like me, I'm built for comfort. I'm not built for speed.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's. I have a friend that I ran with who always said that she's like, just so you know, built for comfort, not speed.

[Doug]

Right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You know what, something is going to happen today. You mentioned in your open that Paula might goes over for all the trivia of our first quarter, which we're going to find out today if that's the case. That's exciting.

[Doug]

If anybody can do it, she can.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

If you are brand new to the show, just maybe fast forward 20 seconds. Because we had some controversy last week, Doug. Controversy on the Stacky Benjamin show.

[Doug]

Who knew? It's the best. I love when that happens. That's when you know you're well loved. When people are totally invested in the show.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But a guy who is at the center of the controversy, Mr. Jesse Kramer, is here. How are you, man?

[Jesse Kramer]

Doug texted me offline and said I'm now winning the competition.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Is that true?

[Doug]

I said you can be if you play your cards right, is what I said.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Jesse, we. And if you hand Doug 10 bucks, I think that's what. I think that's what Doug was really alluding to. No, we had some controversy last week. Just to let everybody know, we are not gonna be able to solve that this week. We sent it to the home office, Doug in Wichita. And it turns out, Jesse, that when you were shooting the shot, your foot might have been on the line. And so we're not sure if you get the point. If OG really loses a point, what's going on? We're gonna have more of that, but we're gonna continue with the trivia this week and see just a Paula can actually get a point.

[Jesse Kramer]

Jesse. Yeah, let's just see how the scores look in like early December. And then we can retroactively decide who got or lost a point last week. I think that's fair.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Until later. Wait till later? Yes. And a woman who never waits till later but she wants to afford anything today. Paula Pant is here. How are you, Paula?

[Paula Pant]

I am fantastic. I am podcasting from my mom's basement.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No way.

[Paula Pant]

Literally, I'm in my mom's basement right now.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's a homie, isn't it? It's a homie.

[Paula Pant]

It's great. And it's full of board games. I've got Payday.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Perfect.

[Paula Pant]

Like the 1970s style. I've got Family Guy. Clue that. Look at that. And then of course, for the real estate investors out there, I've got Monopoly My goodness. But the crown jewel cash flow quadrant, Robert Kiyosaki.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Robert Kiyosaki's game. So do we. Does that mean that you, as you go around the board, you call out the next market downturn, like every 37 seconds?

[Paula Pant]

Exactly. You call like 100 of the last one. Recession.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's right. People who don't know Robert Kiyosaki have no idea what they're missing because there's gloom and doom, Paul, around every corner.

[Paula Pant]

Yeesh.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yes. And actually that kind of bleeds into what we're going to talk about today, right? Creating. If there is gloom and doom, how do we handle it? If it's good weather, if it's bad weather, how do we make an all weather portfolio?

[Paula Pant]

Segue. Look at that segue. Wow.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I don't want to segue into that, though. I want to segue into who our special guest is.

[Paula Pant]

Paula, tell me, tell me about all the. The special guests.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

When I moved over to the financial media side a while ago, what really bothered me was this idea that a lot of people in the space shared. They'd read this book by a wonderful guy named J.L. collins. I love the book. It's called A Simple Path to Wealth. And in that book, he talks about how you can own one mutual fund and you'll be fine. You can own it forever. It's called the Vanguard Total Stock Market index. And other companies also have a total stock market index. You can do that and you'll be okay. And what was amazing to me was that even though I love that idea, it still bothered me. Like, it really, it really should have made me feel calm. And it didn't. And then because I thought, you know what? You can do better once you learn about investing, like, later on, once you're comfortable in the market, you can do better. And so I went out to do the research to prove that you could do better. And it turns out that our guest today is a guy that did all that research for me. I was able to be super lazy. I just pointed people to him and the stuff that he did. He's one of my favorite podcasters. He's one of my favorite radio guys. He's just one of my favorite people all the way from the West Coast. Mr. Paul Merriman joins us. Hey, Mr. Merriman, how are you?

[Paul Merriman]

You know, I'm doing great. And I love that story about JL Because I was on a debate with him. It was a cozy debate. We were nice to each other. But he admitted in that debate that if you just Put some small cap value into your portfolio, you would make more money. So I haven't been able to sleep since, actually.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You've been so pleased with yourself.

[Paul Merriman]

I know. Patting myself, by the way.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What a nice man. And Paul, he's not wrong. You can have that one fun and you will be okay.

[Paul Merriman]

Yeah, but with one fund, you could do a lot better than that fund. That's the part that, that's bugging me is there is a better one fund solution, but I think that's probably for another day.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, and that's the thing that bothers me is that, you know, a lot of times people say, well, I have enough for myself. But I think, Paul, I live in a community where the average income is less than $40,000 a year today in Texarkana. And, man, if I can take some extra money just because I'm blessed with the ability to hang out with people like you and Paula and Jesse and even Doug Heck and learn about this stuff, I can make some excess money that can help my community. I mean, there's got to be something to be said for that.

[Paul Merriman]

That's what they suggest education is actually about. So. Yeah, I think you're right on.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, we've got a great show today. We're going to talk about making your portfolio. Not just your portfolio, your life a little more all weather. So if this random Friday hits where something's bad, you lose your job or inflation happens, you can't afford the grocery store like you were able to, whatever it might be, your portfolio. Right. We've got all these worries and all this stuff happening in the markets these days. What do we do about it? This is going to be a great place to start. But Paul, before we get into this, I also want to point to a resource you have. You have a resource called the Boot Camp that I love. That's a great primer for people when they're getting into investing. Tell everybody about the Boot Camp.

[Paul Merriman]

Well, it's the most serious work that we do. We have over 200 tables and graphs and charts on our site. And at Boot camp, we show people all the information that I think they really need to know. Exactly the same information a professional investment advisor would know. If they know that, they can do it themselves. If they don't learn it, I'm not sure they will.

[Doug]

Right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And the price is right on all this information you're giving to Paul. It is completely free. Yeah. And will you go to paulmerman.com for that? And we'll link to it in our show Notes all right. On today's show, All Weather, we've got Paul here, we got Paula, we've got Jesse, We've even got Doug and me. We've got a couple sponsors to make sure we can keep on keeping on. We're going to hear from them and then we're going to talk about making your portfolio and your life more. All Weather. We're right there in this midway spot between the first warm weekend and realizing short season's right around the corner. And all of a sudden you realize, you know what? Eating well and feeling well, that stops being optional. Well, Factor is how I stop letting a busy schedule be my excuse. Fully prepared meals designed by dietitians and crafted by chefs. Ready in two minutes. No planning, no cooking. Here's what's inside Quality functional ingredients like lean proteins, colorful veggies, whole food ingredients and healthy fats. There are no refined sugars nor artificial sweeteners. No refined seed oils. Meals that fit your goals and schedule. Healthier eating, calorie management and more protein. There's a huge variety to choose from. A hundred rotating weekly meals to keep things fresh and delicious. Options include High Protein Calorie, smart Mediterranean diet, GLP1 support and ready to Eat salads. Plus the new Muscle Pro Collection supports strength and recovery. Perfect if you're getting back into a workout routine like I am. Now that the boot is finally coming off, I'm so excited. I'm now at 25% of the time out of my little boot after my marathon fiasco. Factor is always fresh. It's never frozen. It's ready in about two minutes. No prep, no stress. You can actually stick to your goals. I use Factor you should too. Head to factor meals.com sb50off listen to that deal stackers factormeals.com sb50off and use code sb50off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Offers only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor. Thanks to HomeServe for sponsoring this episode. Well, if you're working on buying your first home, I'm going to tell you something all the homeowning stackers already know. Owning a home's amazing until it's not. One minute you're sipping coffee, in the next you're ankle deep in water from a burst pipe. Repairs don't care about timing and they definitely don't care about your budget. Regular homeowners insurance usually doesn't cover a lot of the day to day wear and tear, plumbing failures, H Vac breakdowns, electrical issues. You're often on your own for those. And that's where HomeServe comes in. Especially while you're building your cash reserve, that emergency fund, you're going to need a backstop. Don't trust yourself to just get it right and have nothing bad happen, because that's always when something bad happens. HomeServe is like a subscription for your home. For as little as 4.99amonth, they've got your back. Repairs are going to hit fast and they hit hard. You could be searching for a contractor in a panic, or you could already be on the phone with HomeServe's 247 hotline scheduling a repair. It's super simple. You choose a plan for your needs and your budget. When something on your plan goes wrong, you just call the 247 hotline and get the repair process started. They've helped homeowners like you for over 20 years. With a trusted national network of 2600 local contractors and with four and a half million customers, a four out of five post repair rating and an A plus BBB rating. Well, you can see why I like them. You can see why they're the real deal. This is why we picked HomeServe to be our go to for stackers who are homeowners. With the pipe burst going into my home, we couldn't find it anywhere in the middle of my yard. Home serve a very quick call. Saves the game. Help protect your home systems and your wallet with HomeServe against covered repairs. Play and start at just 4.99amonth. Go to HomeServe.com to find the plan that's right for you. That's HomeServe.com not available everywhere. Most plants range between 4.99 to 11.99amonth. Your first year terms apply. Uncovered repairs. See HomeServe.com for details. All right, the inspiration for today's piece comes to us from a good friend, Dana Ansbach, a phenomenal cfp. She wrote this piece at the Retirement Manifesto blog and we'll link to it in the show notes. You don't need it open. You don't need it in front of you while you're listening to today's show because we've got you. What Dana talks about is this idea of a lot of people want a flashy sports car. They want this fast, exciting, impressive life for fast, exciting, impressive portfolio. But others want something that maybe handles the rain. They handles the snow, potholes, maybe the occasional trip to Costco. Today we're going to Expand on that idea. Not just all weather portfolios, but all weather money, no matter what happens. So, Paula, let's begin with you. Why are we so in love with that shiny sports car life, the shiny sports car portfolio? Is it greedy? Is it comparison? Or is it maybe something deeper going on psychologically?

[Paula Pant]

Oh, I think many of us aspire to success. A literal sports car is a symbol of success. You know, when you see that there's a bit of a mental shortcut of, oh, that person has, at a minimum, enough discretionary income that they could have a sports car. So it becomes a mental shortcut, it becomes a marker of success. And so I think you take that concept and you translate it to investments. And many people see the story of a hot investment, of crypto, of Nvidia, of back in the early 90s, it was pets.com, you see that hot, shiny new investment, and you hear in survivorship bias, you hear the stories of the people who did make a lot of money with that hot, shiny new investment. And so again, that that same mental shortcut of if I bought that, I bet I could be successful, too. I think that psychology starts to play in.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's interesting, Jesse. Things don't change, right? I haven't been a financial planner in, what, 15, 16 years now, and yet when you talk to financial planners, they still say, and you probably hear this in your office, I just want higher returns. I just want higher returns. Just give me higher returns. What are those people actually saying? Is it about money or is it about fear, missing out, something else going on?

[Jesse Kramer]

I don't know. I think, like, I think the most common cause for that thought process is simply that I looked at what Morningstar said about the past three year returns of this thing, the past five year returns of this thing. I was talking to my neighbor, and I'm smarter than my neighbor. What's that one famous quote like? One of the hardest things in life is to see your neighbor who you know you're smarter than, be more successful than you. And people say, I know how other things have performed, and therefore, if I'm not getting that, I want it. So I think a lot of it does come from that. Charlie Munger has some great quotes on envy and, like, envy and jealousy of being these really powerful motivators for people. I'm sure we'll get into it later, so I won't bring it up now, but it makes me think of this concept of benchmarking. I think it's really, really important in these conversations. Today's conversation but just portfolio conversations in general to say, well, listen, if you're about to retire and your portfolio, I'll just use a 60, 40 portfolio because it's so easy to describe 60% stocks,

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

40% bonds you're talking about. Thank you.

[Jesse Kramer]

Yep, exactly right. If that's what you're invested in and you're comparing yourself to The S&P 500, that's a benchmarking issue and kind of, that's such a fundamental issue, in my opinion, that it's almost hard to progress the conversation from there. Like, first you need to fix that misunderstanding of benchmarks and benchmarking before you can then dive into actually understanding if you're over performing or underperforming. So it's a really nuanced issue, Joe. But if I had to go back to where I started, I think it starts with just comparison. We naturally want to compare ourselves to what other people are doing, how other funds are performing, and, or the S&P

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

500, which is irrelevant for our goals.

[Jesse Kramer]

Right, right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah.

[Jesse Kramer]

But yeah, it's really interesting thought process.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You know, Paul, this idea of the shiny sports car got me thinking. Is the big mistake that you've seen over your career, people take too much risk when they chase that sports car, or is it chasing what. What worked last year? So I jump on the, on last year's game when there's a new game afoot this year.

[Paul Merriman]

Well, I, I think it's a little bit of both sides. The people who are afraid to take any risk and think they're going to go broke if they take any. And then the other people who somehow you can't, you can't slow them up. And the people who, who like that are the people trying to sell the kind of products that people probably shouldn't be putting their money in. That's, that's the part that's so discouraging. But it should start with somebody asking a person a very simple question. And that is, is your desire to beat the market? Is your desire to find the lowest risk way to get the highest return that you need or want, or are you looking for the lowest risk way to produce what you need to get somebody on the right path in the beginning, but the minute you put them on a path that doesn't lead to a sale for you on Wall street, then you got this conflict of interest? I don't think I'm going to go there with the client. I want to go where I can make the sale. And selling that shiny car, it's so easy to do unfortunately, people still buy lottery tickets knowing that the probabilities are not very good.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's so funny, Paul. I have a good friend who works at the bank in town, and his family took his poker money, which we play poker for quarters. So literally takes a bunch of his quarters. He had had big winnings. He'd won like $15. And his family told him that they were going to take it and they were going to invest it. Lottery tickets. When the lottery hit a billion dollars. And he got angry, Paul. He got super angry that they were doing it, but they did it anyway. And they're like, dad, somebody's got to win. He's like, but it's not going to be us. What are you talking about? And guess what happened?

[Paul Merriman]

Oh, that's terrible.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

He won $40,000. Oh, see, he. He won a bunch of money. Which gets me wondering. This question is chasing the shiny investment ever? Ever? Actually, maybe. Good.

[Paul Merriman]

I'd say. No, that's what I'd say. Because, I mean, the worst thing to do is to teach a kid how to play the stock market game in high school, and he wins or she wins. And now they think the way to invest is the way that that stock market game turned out. That's a terrible lesson. And just because somebody wins the lottery does not mean it's a good thing for the next person to do.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. And I think, Paul, the good lesson there is that he still hates it. He stays still. Don't get me wrong, he's happy with the 40,000 bucks, but I don't think that Robert's ever going to play it again. Paul, do you think there's ever a time when leaning into the trend, right? Like thinking, okay, AI is the trend right now. AI has been a bumpy road a little bit lately, but it's not going away. Is there a time to lean into it?

[Paula Pant]

Well, I think there's a distinction between. Between a trend versus a fundamental shift in the way that society operates. Going back to the 90s, the late 90s, early 2000s, people could see that the Internet was not just a fad, that the Internet was here to stay. And the information superhighway was going to fundamentally change everything about our lives in ways that would be deep and permanent. Where people went wrong was picking winners and losers based on that. So overall, being bullish about the Internet, the information superhighway, was great, but picking specific winners and losers was not so great. And I think the same thing right now is happening with AI I'm being bullish about AI Like, I'M very bullish about AI Assuming that it doesn't get smarter than us and then overtake us. That's a different story for a different reason. Right?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Battlestar Galactica Live.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But overall I'm very bullish about AI But I don't know who is going to be the big winner there. Right. I don't know of the companies that are hot right now, which ones are Internet Explorer and which ones are early Amazon.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, we don't know until, I mean, you got to be able to look in the rearview mirror.

[Paula Pant]

Right, Right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

To figure out what's what. I wanted to start off with that what's the danger in the shiny sports car before we get to all weather. So let's turn the corner, Jesse, into all weather. When I said all weather money, we're going to try to help people make their money. All weather, where's the average person start and what does that really mean to you?

[Jesse Kramer]

Yeah, well, you're asking me where to start. And one of my questions I had to you, Joe and, or, or Paul or we can take this any way we want, but is what do we mean by all weather? And maybe that's really the question that you want me to answer right now. So I'll kind of, I'll put my finger on it. It was funny in the chat when we were having our YouTube live issues here today and I was kind of in the.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We were having issues. I didn't realize we had issues. I had no idea. No idea.

[Jesse Kramer]

I posed a pop quiz to the audience. I said, well, how much of Ray Dalio's all weather portfolio is stocks? And I got a bunch of different guesses. And the answer is 30%. And the rest of his portfolio, I forget exactly what it was. I think it was 40% treasuries or maybe 15% short term bonds, 40% long term bonds. And then it's like seven and a half percent gold and seven and a half percent commodities. And so he's got all these different asset classes, some of which you could say are a little controversial maybe. But I think the thing that Ray Dalio and other all weather proponents, they're trying to do is they're trying to protect against these really big macro risks. Maybe it's inflation or maybe it's deflation, maybe it's recession or maybe they're just trying to say, hey, I want to have enough invested in growth assets so that if the economy's doing well, my portfolio still does well. So no matter what that economic weather is inflationary deflationary growing, receding. They still want something in the portfolio to be doing well. So I'll pause my answer there and just see if Paula or Paul feel much differently than that.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. Paul, when I said all weather money, what was on your mind?

[Paul Merriman]

Well, of course, that's right at my alley. I love the ten fund strategy. Now, I'm not advocating for the ten fund strategy, but I'm half in. I do it at my own equity portion of the portfolio. And that would be some U.S. stocks, some international stocks. I'm 50, 50, some large, some small. I'm 50 50. Some value, some growth. I'm 50 50. And then I also have 50% in bonds and 50% in stocks. So I have spread the risk. So when internationals are performing, I get some. If you go back to the 70s, international and small and value were good. The S&P 500 was not. If you look at 2000-2009, the S&P 500 was not good. The others were good. And of course, when you have a crash like you have in 2000-2002, you're going to have the fixed income being there to help balance that risk out. The problem is when people start market timing and saying now is the time to be an international and they start moving to international. And typically the time they move is when it's been on a run already. And so when you talk about that shiny, well, AI, for example, I've got AI in my portfolio. I've got lots of it in my portfolio, but I'm not there because it's hot. It's there because it's just another industry that is represented in all of these different indexes that I advocate people hold in their portfolio. So it's the market timing problem with a lot of these people, I think, is the biggest problem, not the fact that they don't understand the idea of having different equity asset classes.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, we're chasing the shiny sports car, Paul. We're chasing the sports car. Paula. Paul makes a great point there around the index. I think a lot of people, a lot of our stackers don't understand that these indexes are self cleaning, which I think really what Paul's bringing up is that when something gets hot, you actually get more of it. Can you explain how the index does that for people?

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, I mean, so when something gets hot, when, when something becomes a bigger share of the overall index, you end up owning more of it. So by virtue of doing that, you do end up leaning into the winners. I know people have mixed feelings about that some people say, you know what, I don't want an over concentration in the winners. But we also know historically that the big winners there, there are generally a handful of companies that do tend to carry the index. We don't know in advance what they're going to be. But once upon a time those were railroad stocks, right? Like that. That has always been the case throughout history that there have been a handful of major companies that have really carried the index and naturally, organically you end up owning more of them. When you buy the index as a whole. And Joe to the self cleaning portion of it, as companies go out of business, they naturally just fall out of the index and get replaced by newcomers and you yourself don't have to do a thing.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

So yeah, you don't have to weed the portfolio at all. Which was so often the case when I would find people back when I was a financial planner that were independent investors doing their own thing. Their portfolio badly needed weeding because they'll look at it three weeks in a row and then they don't look at it for eight months and then they look at it three weeks in a row and then again don't look at it for eight months. I want to broaden this topic though because you know Paula, I'm going to stick with you. We weren't just talking about portfolios, which is where Jesse and Paul went. I was talking about all weather money which might be about cash reserves or low debt or flexibility. Like what gives you the ability to have more of an all weather life.

[Paula Pant]

Cash is king, right? Nothing is more important than it. One mistake that people often make is that when times are good, people often view the market as a high yield savings account. And so when times are good, people will say, well I hate the fact that my cash is sitting, you know, in a high yield savings account earning next to nothing when it could instead be in the market earning double digit returns. And then when something sudden and negative like recessions are always defined by severity and duration, right? So something severe happens and maybe it lasts for a long time. That's when people are really glad that they hold cash. And so having that cash allocation, having the proper insurances that fit you, having the proper like protection overall, like thinking, not you think about any sports game, there's offense and defense. So having the right defenses in place as well, that gives you a good all weather life.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Let's talk about that idea playing defense. Jesse, when people think about financial storms, we talked earlier about those black swan events, right? We worry about what happens if let's say there's craziness in the Middle east or whatever the thing might be that we might not have seen coming. Is that truly the biggest thing? If you put on your financial planner, hat we should be worried about, are these external events or are there things that maybe are more under our purview that we could build defenses around?

[Jesse Kramer]

Well, I guess I think the answer is probably both, right? I mean, there's certainly behavioral things that we need to control, and there's certainly that fact of, you know, hey, insofar as you can control what you spend and control what you save, great. But insofar as over the long run, you can even control what you earn and you can start earning more money, fantastic. So obviously, like, those are the biggest dials are the ones that you can control, and. And some of these defenses that you can build up for yourself are also in your control. You know, Paula mentioned emergency funds and insurance decision decisions. Like that's within your control too. But I do think to myself, a really cool concept that sometimes I feel like I ought to implement more day to day is this fact that, like, there are so many interesting, different risks, including financial risks in our lives. And a lot of times when you hear a certain story in this kind of financial planning space, someone has really keenly identified this one particular risk and they're going after that with all their muster. And to them, what they're doing makes so much sense because they're like, well, of course the risk I currently feel, for example, might be entering retirement without enough money. And that's why I'm still at 100% stocks, even though I'm 56 years old and want to retire by 60, because the biggest risk is I don't have enough money. Stocks, I'm told, help me grow my money over the long run. I'm all stocks. And the thing to think about is like, to pull that person aside and say, hey, there are all these other risks that maybe you haven't thought of, and certainly you're not weighing largely enough in your life that you probably ought to be protecting against. So the point is that if you start the conversation first by thinking about the risks, and then you think about how to allocate your resources to protect against those risks, that can be a pretty interesting way of building up a financial life from the bottom up.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Paul, Jesse goes back to the portfolio talking about 100% stocks. I want to ask you about that because more and more research I've seen lately suggests that that can be the key to success. However, the problem is not the stocks. The problem is you. Like, how hard is it for an investor to train themselves to stay in this bumpy portfolio of all stocks when they're hearing more and more research showing an all stock portfolio is the place to be over the long term?

[Paul Merriman]

Well, I think every person, as an advisor, this was my approach in working with clients. I think they should all expect that tomorrow starts the worst bear market in their life. I mean, they should be built from day one to expect bad things. I used to tell people, if you follow my advice, I guarantee you will lose money. Absolutely guarantee it. And now I want to talk with you about how much you're willing to lose to have your money invested. And if it's an all stock portfolio, there's nothing wrong with that, except what you're accepting at any moment now is losing half of your money. In fact, many of us sat through a day in October of 1987 where the market went down 22% in one day. Yeah, one day. And we know it went down over 50% in 73, 74 and 50 in 2000, 2002 and 50 in 2000. All of these times it goes down 50. So my belief is if we want to stay the course for a lifetime, whatever that happens over the glide path over a lifetime, we should just assume the bad times are starting and realize that we're going to have to accept some loss. My wife and I, 50, 50 stocks and bonds. We are accepting a 25% loss of our saving. That's what's there if you're 50, 50. In the meantime, I'm investing. And the reason we take that 50% equity is because we're trying to help out Western Washington University and we're trying to help out children and all those other things that don't even have to do with our lifetime. But right up front, I have determined how much I'm willing to lose and I expect to lose it getting away from the portfolio.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

My last question before the halfway break is, do you think, Paul, from your financial planning days, that disability is the biggest threat when it comes to risk management strategies?

[Paul Merriman]

Well, it is one that's rarely addressed for one thing, unfortunately, but certainly in some industries it's a necessity. And the probabilities are better than death for a lot of people. I don't know the exact numbers, but

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

you got a one on one chance of death at some point. Oh, you're talking about this year.

[Paul Merriman]

That's right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

How do you beat that number? I don't think any of us beat that. I want to know your strategy, Paul.

[Paul Merriman]

Yeah, I don't think we're very good at addressing risk. If you look at all of the things that lead to successful investing, almost every one of them is a decision on managing a risk, a risk of loss, whether it's taxes or inflation or the expenses. We should look at every risk we face as an investor and ask ourselves are we addressing that risk? And certainly disability is a huge one.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We are going to dive more into that because I want to dive more into the non portfolio pieces of creating an all weather portfolio in the second half of today's discussion. But at the midway point we pause for our year long trivia competition. And even though it's the last week of Q1 because we had to send the videotape via Horse and Buggy all the way to Wichita, there will be no margin calls. Paul has no idea what the hell we're talking about. But there'll be no margin calls today because we have to review the tape.

[Doug]

So I mean like the Major League Baseball, the NFL, they get to send their stuff when plays get reviewed there, it's in New York like instantaneously.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We don't have that kind of, we don't have that kind of money.

[Doug]

We got three pack a day. Dottie sitting in her apartment in Wichita trying to figure this out. So just be patient with us people.

[Paula Pant]

Wait, wait, wait. If there's no margin call today, that, that means I lose my Q1 opportunity.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We will make an allowance. If we, if we do it, we'll make an allowance, but we just, we just have to figure out where this whole thing's headed.

[Jesse Kramer]

Just wait until the listeners hear. You're getting multiple margin calls in one quarter. Paul.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Call. You just wait.

[Paula Pant]

The thing we're reviewing in the tape, is it that Jesse may not have waited for the full 3 second interval? Is that the allegation?

[Doug]

No, no, no. It's whether or not he was even eligible to make a margin call. Did he have enough points to make a margin call? Were Joe and I thorough enough when we recited the rules at the beginning of this? There's a lot of things under. It's all very intertwined and complicated.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

So complicated, Paul, to things, I mean just our trivia is so complicated. Today's is not complicated, Paul. Today you're playing for my co host OG who couldn't be here today. So we keep the financial planning guys together. Good news and bad news that you're playing for OG you want the good news or the bad news?

[Paul Merriman]

Oh, I always want the bad News first.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's right. Set up as if it's going to be the worst bear market ever. Right. Like you just said. Doug, give Paul the bad news. What place is OG in right now?

[Doug]

Well, the dark lord himself is in first place. Paul, he's got six points. I'm sorry, og, he's got six points, which means you temporarily have six points, which means you got to go first. You're out there. You're the. You're the bleeding edge, shining light.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. Showing everybody how this thing's done. Paul, here's the good news, though. You're slightly ahead because our other financial planner, Jesse, is. Well, how's Jesse doing?

[Doug]

He's got one point, Joe, but there is a big fat asterisk next to that one point. It's like the Roger Maris hitting 61 home runs. Big asterisk in the record books at the moment for Jesse. Three pack a day.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Dottie has to figure out how that works. And then, Paul, what does Paul have? How many points does Paula have?

[Doug]

Well, we could just move on. I mean, I think it'd be safe if we just probably. Good idea.

[Paul Merriman]

Just.

[Doug]

Look, let's just get to the question.

[Paula Pant]

What rhymes with zero?

[Doug]

Paul has less than just

[Paula Pant]

Lero. Hero. Hero.

[Doug]

Yes.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Paul is our zero. Hero.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yes. All right, is Paula gonna get on the board before the first quarter's over? Well, we need a trivia question, Doug. What's on tap today, man?

[Doug]

Well, hey there, Stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and today is the birthday of a rising star. No, not me. Singer and actress Halle Bailey was born on Today's date in 2001. Now, look, OG's not here to defend himself, so I probably shouldn't say this, but it's also the first day he started demanding naps as part of his contract. Anyway, here's today's question story. By the way, not only did H. Not only did hi star as Ariel in the liveaction version of the Little Mermaid, but she's also half of the popular duo Chloe and H, who sang America the Beautiful during Super Bowl 53 back in 2019 when she was only. Hold on. Gotta do math. 2001. From 2019. They were 18. 18 years old.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Bam.

[Doug]

I did it. Got it right. Got it right. Here's today's question. If you had wanted to buy a 30 second ad saying Happy birthday to Halle, what's the least amount of money that network would have let you spend back during Super Bowl 53? I'll be back right after I see about charging for on air shoutouts. I'm thinking Stacker Drew owes me like 50 bucks for last week's shout out. Wait a minute. That was another one. It's like a hundred bucks now. I'm gonna be rich.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Doug's making money already today off of Stacker Drew. So, Paul, here's the deal. It's 2019. You're buying a 30 second ad on the Super Bowl. What's the minimum amount of money the network's gonna let you spend?

[Paul Merriman]

Yeah, you know, I. I know it's a lot. I'm going to go with $12 million.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

$12 million is the least money you can spend. Jesse, are you a fan of. I forgot to ask Paul this. Are you a fan of the live action version of the Little Mermaid? Did you see Halle Bailey?

[Jesse Kramer]

I have a memory of seeing her in the movie. One of the James Bond movies. Or swordfish in the 90s? Nope, I'm thinking of the same person.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's Halle Berry. Ah, this is Halle Bailey.

[Jesse Kramer]

Got it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah.

[Jesse Kramer]

Never heard of her. Never heard of her.

[Paul Merriman]

By the way, I've watched that movie at least a dozen times.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

The live action version of Little Cartoon. Oh, the cartoon version of it, Yes.

[Paul Merriman]

I have old kids, you know. I got a 60 year old son, for crying out loud.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

How can that be when you're only 37, Paul.

[Paul Merriman]

Yeah, I know. That's how I feel.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

All right, Jesse, what's your guess, man?

[Jesse Kramer]

I'm gonna go lower than Paul. I'm gonna go. So this is the least amount someone could spend on a 30 second ad. I'm gonna say $1.7 million.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, you're going the opposite way. Yeah. Boy, there's a big. I know. Paula, how you like the field goal? We got 1.7. And Doug, what was Paul's guess?

[Doug]

Paul's guess was $12 million.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Joe, 12 million and 1.7. Did you see the live action version of the Little Mermaid?

[Paula Pant]

No, no, I haven't heard the name, but I am not familiar with her. I have not watched the live action version of the Little Mermaid. I've heard that it's good. I've heard good things about it, but I don't really watch movies very often, so. But I did, you know, I did like the cartoon version. I watched that as a kid. Okay, so 32nd AD in 2019. It's notable that the question is what's the least amount? Because I'm trying to. That implies there are different price points for the same length of ad in the same Super Bowl. So I'm trying to figure out what would cause those prices to change. Would it be like placement in the Super Bowl? Yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

When? When during the game. Whether or not there's a wardrobe malfunction. I mean, there's all kinds of different things that factor in.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I think if it's the fourth quarter and it's a boring game, you know, there's a chance it might be a boring game and people will tune out. So I think fourth quarter advertising might be priced lower than the, you know, around the national anthem.

[Paula Pant]

If it's a great game, then wouldn't more people be tuning in?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But I think there's more risk. I think to put it in investing terms, there's more standard deviation on your money when you buy that ad.

[Paula Pant]

All right, I'm gonna buffer Jesse to the upside. So I'm gonna go 1.8, 1.8 million.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's the way the pros do it right there, Paul. They just. Oh, is it cap them right like that. All right, we got 1.7 million. We got 1.8. We got 12 million.

[Jesse Kramer]

Paula, do you remember? This isn't Paul. This is OG he looks like Paul Merriman. This is not. This is OG

[Doug]

that's right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's not the nice guy who's on with us today. It's OG Yes. All right, we're going to find out who's going to win. This is Paula going to win one before the first quarter's over? We're about to find out. We'll be right back. When we answer stacker questions about running a business, I think a lot of us think the same things. What if my business fails? This is really the right decision, right? We ask all these different questions and yet you talk to any entrepreneur, they tell you that actually making that leap is one of the best decisions they ever made. And then you talk to them about having the right tools and how Shopify over and over and over has helped so many entrepreneurs ease those worries with their expertise, their helpful tools and their easy to use platform. And the reason why is simple. Shopify is the commercial platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all E commerce in the United States. From brands just starting out to brands like Momofuku or Allbirds or how about Mattel? You'll accelerate your efficiency. Whether you're uploading new products or trying to improve existing ones. Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. Best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping, to processing returns and beyond. If you've heard me talk about entrepreneurship before, you know how important marketing is. So you should be wondering, what do people don't know about my brand? Well, Shopify helps you find your customers with easy to run email and social media campaigns. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.comsb go to shopify.comsb that's shopify.comsb Disney wants to know, are you ready for Marvel Studios Thunderbolts the New Avengers, now streaming on Disney plus? Let's do this. One of the best Marvel movies of all time is now streaming on Disney plus.

[Paul Merriman]

Hey, you weren't listening to me.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I said Thunderbolts. The New Avengers is now streaming on Disney plus.

[Paula Pant]

Meet the New Avengers.

[Paul Merriman]

That's cool then.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Marvel Studios Thunderbolts the New Avengers, rated PG 13 now streaming on. You guessed it, Disney Plus.

[Hallmarkies Podcast Host]

Do you love romcoms? Do you wish you could talk about Christmas movies year round? Then we have the perfect podcast for you. Hallmarkies Podcast. Throughout the year we cover all things romance, holiday and Hallmark, including recaps of every Hallmark show like When Calls, the Heart and the Way Home. You can also get loads of bonus content covering shows like Bridgerton, Sweet Magnolias and and just like that. We are an all female group of friends who are passionate for these shows and movies and give our honest opinions as well as gush over what we love so much. But that's not all. Every Monday there are interviews with all your favorite actors, writers, directors and more. Check out Hallmarkies podcasts on all your podcast providers and on YouTube. That's Hallmarky's podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

All right, Paul, you started off at 12 million and man, both Jesse and then Paula. I think Paula was just playing the game though. They thought maybe that guess was a little high. How do you. How are you feeling? You feeling good?

[Paul Merriman]

You know, I didn't understand how this was going to work and so I was thinking of coming in at 1.9 if I could.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Paul's like erase a race.

[Paul Merriman]

You know something, this is a problem. This is an area I don't spend much time on. So I am just guessing. I know that now there are a lot more than 12 million at least from what I've red. So from what I just heard, I would probably go lower if I had the choice. But no, I'm, I'm not uncomfortable with my guests.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I was gonna say 2019. Not that far away. And they were still expensive then. So, Jesse, you had 1.7. How you feeling?

[Jesse Kramer]

Not good. Not good anymore. I mean, I wasn't feeling great to begin with because I might. My gut. Okay, I'll walk you through it. My gut was that a full ad prime ad is like 5, 6, 7 million. And that if you've got really bad placement, maybe you're paying a fraction of that. But when I heard Paul just say there that like the prime ads might be even more than the 12 that he was guessing, that definitely moved my anchor to a place where I realized I'm probably wrong.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Some of these numbers pretty eye popping. Paula, how you feeling?

[Paula Pant]

You know, I'm feeling pretty good. Like, I think that in reality the true answer is probably in the neighborhood of like 3mil.ish. So I'm feeling pretty good.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That was your gut.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, yeah. And we know how. How right that tends to be.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I was gonna say why the hell do you think that's right?

[Paul Merriman]

You know what I hate about this topic is that I heard, I read that over 50% of the money that was spent on ads at the last super bowl were for gambling, sports gambling. And that just drives me absolutely nuts that that has happened to our society.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I heard a Robin Hood commercial just during the conference championships in. In college basketball last week.

[Doug]

I thought you were gonna say during the break for this trivia.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No, I hope that happened one time accidentally. I have no idea how there was a Robin Hood. By the way, Paul, we just got done ripping Robin Hood and there was a Robin Hood ad showed up. Just perfect. But Robinhood get involved with gambling. That's incredible. Speaking of incredible, will this be the incredible time that Paula Pant wins? Is it low enough that Jesse is going to get the win? Is it up there in the stratosphere because it's expensive? And team OG Slash Paul Merriman, that they win. Doug, you got the answer, man.

[Doug]

And here I come with a Joe. Hey there, Stackers. I'm big time podcast influencer and guy who'll shout out your loved ones names for a cool 50 bucks. Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. Turns out Joe's over there shaking his head about the $50 shout out thing. That dude's a wet blanket. We'll have to circle back on that for a but today we're talking about birthday girl Halle Bailey. You may remember her in the live action version of the Little Mermaid where she played opposite Paul Merriman. Fun fact. Who starred as her wise and love lovable dad. King Neptune. It could be true. You don't know. You both have great beards.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Very similar beards.

[Doug]

Yeah, but because Halle performed America the Beautiful At Super Bowl 53, we asked our contestants how much of your minimum spend would have been for a 30 second ad. You know, I'm not going to just tell you how much it was, but what I will tell you is that it was 6.9 million less than what Paul guessed. 3.9 million more than what Jesse guessed.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No way.

[Doug]

Just 3.3 million more than what Paula guessed. Paula is a winner at the last second. Coming in before the end of the quarter. The correct answer is 5.1 million, making Paula Pant our winner.

[Paul Merriman]

It had to.

[Paula Pant]

I didn't even have a speech prepared. I'd like to thank.

[Doug]

Look at the pure joy on her face. She's not thinking that.

[Jesse Kramer]

Wow.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Holy crap, Paul. I'm tearing up. I'm tearing up.

[Paula Pant]

Wow. I'd like to thank my family for always being there for me. I'd like to thank the Academy.

[Doug]

It's a big day in the basement.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Nice job.

[Paula Pant]

I'd like to thank my mom's basement.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But I think Paul is 100% right. I think between 2019 and today, they've gone up substantially.

[Doug]

I've just verified this, Joe. A 30 second ad in this most recent Super Bowl 2026 was $10 million. It was $8 million last year. So it went up a big percentage. Yeah, you know, just between 25 and 26.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, well, enough of that. We'll put the trivia away for another week. We'll find out what happened with the controversy from last week. Man, the plot thickens here. But let's get back to our All Weather portfolio plot because I think this is a really important topic, Paul. All these years of seeing people retire. Right. I feel like just during my 16 years as a financial planner, the number of people I got to see retire successfully was a large number. And people listening to this, they want to do it once. Right. But you've been blessed to see it many, many times. What's the biggest financial shock that you saw derail people's retirement?

[Paul Merriman]

The biggest one I saw was being underinsured and getting in a car accident. And they thought they had plenty of insurance. But the lawsuits that went to the folks that they had hit, it wiped them out. It just wiped them out. They could have. They didn't have the umbrellas that they. In fact, that's probably the reason I have umbrellas that are larger than normal, is because it's a Very low cost to protect against a catastrophic event, but they happen. Now, if you talk about things that people did more generally that got them in trouble. Not many of our clients got in trouble because they tend to have enough to take it to an investment advisor to do the work. And that says that most of them probably would have been okay without me. But what we did see is when people came in, the thing that they were about to do that was wrong was they were about to take more money than they should out. Oh, they were taking 6 and 7% because that's what it. There are many people who came in for us to prepare a retirement plan and what we told them was go back to work because they did not have enough. And the odds was that they were going to run out of money before they'd run out of life if they live a long time.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Is that just a case of not really looking at your portfolio size versus what your goals are in retirement? Like just this simple? I didn't adequately plan my goals to see if that number's safe.

[Paul Merriman]

You know, there are people in this industry that tell folks that the average return for the s and P500 is 12% a year.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Who would say that?

[Paul Merriman]

Somebody who doesn't know anything. But the reality is that if somebody hears that and says, well, I can take out eight, I'll get the 12, it's the average. And you can say, well, people can't be that stupid. But in fact, for a lot of people, it's just not what they do. It isn't that they're stupid, it's just not what they're bright with. I know one thing and I know it really well, and my wife would be the first to tell you about the rest of life. I'm not all that smart, but I know this field and I know what's right and at least what's wrong, probability wise. And a lot of people don't and they need somebody. I'm working hard to try to help people be. Do it yourself, investors. That's what I'm focused on. But I know a lot of people are never going to do it right on their own and they need somebody to take care of them.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But at the very least, I think even then you still need to know what you're doing, which is what I like about what you teach, Paul. Because even if I have that person in my corner, which I believe people should at least surround themselves with smart people, you still got to know your stuff. Nobody's going to know this. This for you, Jesse. There was an interesting piece I saw in the media last week. People predicting that the jobless rate of students just out of College could hit 30% because of AI. So AI becoming this concern, taking away jobs. How do I plan around this idea that I might be jobless? How do I get ready for the specter that no matter whether I'm coming out of college or I'm 40 years old, I might have my boss come to me next week and say, pack it up.

[Jesse Kramer]

That's a really hard question. It's a little existential. Especially the more kind of value you tie to your work and your career, the more existential it feels. Practically an emergency fund helps. An emergency fund is that thing that at least gives you three months or six months or 12 months of time to not totally freak out. I still think if my boss came to me and said I was being replaced by AI, I would be pretty freaked out. I mean, I know Paul, I've heard Paula talk about this, and she certainly knows more about it than I do about, like, some of the skills that you want to develop at work to try to make yourself a little bit, you know, give yourself that steely resolve against the threats of AI Because I think certain people in certain jobs, certain careers are probably more. More likely to be replaced. Like, they've got more vulnerabilities and other people in other jobs or there's certain skills you can acquire to make yourself less vulnerable. And maybe the silliest part of the answer, but the third answer is like, I think, you know, my brother's a contractor, right? He does basements and kitchen and bathroom remodels. And it's like, it's really hard for me to see how AI is going to displace him. It's much easier for me to see how AI is going to displace me. I work in an office. I provide advice for a living. So I think, you know, maybe some of it comes back to too. It's like, what's your fallback? If push came to shove and you lost your job, where would you go next? And thinking about that in advance, I think is better than. Better than sticking your head in the sand.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I like that because it also includes part of your financial plan, includes networking. I mean, includes going out and making sure that your resume is dusted off and you're ready to move. And also being well rounded. I think, you know, thinking about your skill set outside of your. Your immediate surroundings. Paul, a part of that involves negotiating. Somebody I know has a whole thing about negotiating. I'm not sure who that is, but let's say hypothetically that it was you. Negotiating seems to me then to be a skill that I need today more than ever. Agree?

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, I absolutely agree. The thing about negotiating, the number one kind of myth that I want to bust is a lot of people believe that it's a zero sum game. And what you really are doing when you're negotiating is you are trying to come up with a solution in which everybody wins even more. So you're trying to read the room and understand what is important to the other party and then have the introspection to understand what is important to me and then find a solution where. Because oftentimes the variables that are important to the other party are not the same as the variables that are important to you. So if you think of all of the variables, especially with a job, you've got, you've got salary, but you've got health insurance, retirement benefits, paid time off, sick days, commuter benefit, depending on how big the company is, maybe commuter benefits or gym, you've parking, hybrid work versus fully on site, depending on the job. Again, there are all of these different factors at play and they're a professional development budget, you know, that sort of a thing. And when you figure out what are the things that are really important to my employer, what are the things that are really important to me, and then you like, get the things that are important to you and trade off the things less important to you, but that are important to the other party. Everybody walks away with a better deal.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What you're saying is we don't think about negotiation wide enough.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, exactly. So it's about widening the lens because so many people think that negotiation is a synonym for confrontation when actually it is a form of creative collaboration.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And what's interesting to me here too is understanding the person on the other side is a key piece of it. What do they want?

[Paula Pant]

Right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Because respecting what they want, I think is a lot of about what's getting what you want. I think those two go together. Paul, I want to swing back to the portfolio one more time. There are times we build these all weather portfolios. And I've had this, I'm sure you had it. I remember back in 1999, early 2000, just before the market went down, I got fired by a client. And the reason was his portfolio had only done 45%. His friends were getting 80%. 85% in Internet 1.0. Right, the Internet stock craze. But the reason was we had built for these people. We'd helped Them build an all weather portfolio like we're talking about today. What do you say to people when they come to you and they feel like, yeah, okay, my portfolio is diversified, but that means it's broken, right? Because that's specifically the conversation we were having. Because at that time, as you remember 1999, diversification felt broken.

[Paul Merriman]

Well, it did. And the strategy that I would call an all weather portfolio, just talking about the equities over that five year period compounded at about 12% a year. That was a period of time that the S&P 500 compounded at over 28% a year. And a lot of people just came to the conclusion that all they ever needed in their life is the total market index or the S&P 500, because they had done so well. And the problem is this recency bias. We have a free book that we give away that at the back of the book it has the 48 biases. According to Kahneman, Daniel Kahneman. These are biases that get us in trouble financially and make us do the wrong thing. And we took the 500 page book from Kahneman and boiled it down to 16 pages of the biases themselves.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

How does he feel like that when you cut out the other 70 something pages?

[Paul Merriman]

Well, the reality is people need to understand how ill prepared I never, I have read at least a half a dozen times you, money and you'd Brain by Jason Zweig. I love that book. It is such a great primer on how crazy. I mean, if we think that we're a little bit nutty about money or our clients are. When you read that book, you understand. Yeah, most people are just a little bit nutty. And you got to work so unbelievably hard to keep them on the straight and narrow. That's what an advisor is paid for. Anybody can put together a portfolio. It's keeping them on the straight and narrow. And when other people are making more money. So it's educational about the intellectual aspect of it and the psychological aspect of it. And those are two totally different problems. And some people can be really good about the portfolio part, but they don't get the psychology. And so they aren't a good advisor, even though they're pretty doggone smart. And that's something sometimes you find out too late.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, and that's what was frustrating was I couldn't find a way to convince these people that in the long run this idea of going tech. And of course they changed in early 22 or early 2000. And Paul, you know what happened to them. Then if they switched their portfolio to tech, they switched right at the time the market started dropping March of that year. And they ended up getting just absolutely

[Paul Merriman]

obliterated by not hanging on one market timing mistake. One can cut your retirement in half for a lifetime one. And that's what people don't get until it happens to them. And that's what happened to them, Jesse.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And I feel like that's half your job. It's not what you do, it's what you convince people not to do.

[Jesse Kramer]

Yeah, totally. I mean, it's the Charlie Munger, right invert always inverted. Tell me where I'm going to die. So I never go there. It's like, tell me the things that will absolutely ruin my financial plan. And those can be some of the lowest hanging fruit that you decide to protect yourself against. And Paul's right. I mean, someone who she. She didn't end up working with me, but. Because it doesn't matter. But she told me the story as we were talking during COVID She worked in higher education and she saw the college that she worked at changing around her during that March and April of COVID 19. And she was like, this is going to be the most unbelievably destructive thing that our society has ever seen. And so it totally freaked her out. Which kind of makes sense if you're see if you're on a college campus and you're seeing the way that react rightfully so. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so what did she do? Well, she made a portfolio decision at kind of the barest bottom bear market of COVID By the time the market had recovered, I think maybe her, her decision was somewhere in like the 25 or 30% range of her portfolio value. Right. You can almost think of it as a scar. It's like that scar is never going to go away. Her portfolio has this scar on it now. It's never going to go away. And so to prevent someone from doing something like that can be so powerful.

[Doug]

Anyway, Jesse, that story reminds me of an exercise I used to do with a lot of clients when I was in consulting. And we do some strategic planning or do some operational planning and whenever, inevitably you would do the default for consultants, right. Or like, let's brainstorm. And you'd sit there and look at each other after about four ideas and nothing would come out. But as soon as I would say, let's do the crash the plane exercise, right? And we'd say if we wanted to screw this up as royally as we possibly could to make sure this plane crashes, you can't shut people up. I mean, there's so many things like our brains are naturally wired to think about that stuff. And then all you do, once you've got your list of 72 things you can do to screw everything up, is just put a. Don't. Just put the word don't in front of that. One of those in this context would be don't sell after the market just took a dive.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, and again, in this case, don't compare a portfolio to the s and P500. You know, don't compare what you're trying to do to this arbitrary number. Figure out what you need to get where you want to go. And all that means is kind of knowing a little bit about where, where you want to go. I think it's a great place to leave it. It's funny you talk about scars. In fact, Jay, Greg hanging out with us on YouTube says the scar analogy is a really good one. My father in law, Paul, you were talking about 1987. My father in law sold on that day, the day that the stock market went through the floor. And as Paul knows, and you guys may know, the market roared right back and that money was gone. And the bad news was he owned mutual funds. And my father in law did not understand that when you sold, you waited till the end of the day. Right? It didn't matter if you called your broker at 10am or at 2pm, you were out at the end of the day. And of course 87, you were doing online, by the way, for the young people out there. That's. Why would you call your broker?

[Paul Merriman]

Can I share one quick story about that day? I was a market timer at that point, only a market timer. I didn't have a buy and hold portion to my business, which we did later. And on that day, my clients were totally out of the market. And because we were out of the market, we had been out of the market for a month. It's not like we called the collapse. We were out when it happened. And everybody wanted to give me credit for having called the market. And I even ended up on Wall street week. And I was on, I had a three page spread in U.S. news World Report. The money the clients just rolled in because we did that, we totally underperformed because we walked into a market where being defensive was not helpful. I've just seen people chase performance. There's something magic about what just happened. Like we believe we could capture that if we just did a few things. But it seems very difficult to Capture that magic. It's like buying last week's winning lottery tickets after they are announced to be. You can hold the winning ticket for which you get nothing. You cannot buy the past. That's the hardest thing to get people to understand. There is no risk in the past. You can't buy.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Is interesting that they didn't want defensive Paul Merriman. They wanted the Oracle in Seattle. Paul Merriman. That's who they wanted.

[Paul Merriman]

That's right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, the Oracle. Guys, great discussion. Thank you so much. And thank you, by the way, to Dana Ansbach for writing this piece. And we'll link to it that inspired today's discussion. Will link it in our show notes. It's stacky benjamins dot com. Let's find out the great work that all of you are doing.

[Doug]

Paul.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What's up Next for you, Mr. Merriman?

[Paul Merriman]

Well, I got to finish the Bootcamp series. Every year I speak to the graduating nurses at Texas A and M for three hours. It is absolutely as good as it gets because it's a chance to get them right at that point where they're walking out, starting to make money. And now we want to get them to do the right thing. And I do that anywhere people want it on Zoom. If I can be helpful to any group of young graduates like that.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I thought you were coming down here to my neck of the woods. I was going to come see you while you were in College Station.

[Paul Merriman]

I am coming down there.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You are going to College Station.

[Paul Merriman]

I is. That's College Station in, in Texas.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah.

[Paul Merriman]

Yeah. I am going down there and then I'm going to see you at the Millionaires in Orlando.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. The MMM conference will be in the Villages. Speaking together. How about that? It's a dual threat. Paul Merriman, Joe Salsi. Hi. I got to try to keep up, man. I don't know, don't know how, how to do it, but people can go get the boot camp right [e-mail]. we'll also link to that Paul in the show notes.

[Paul Merriman]

Thank you. And thank you all for what you guys are doing. I really appreciate it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We are. We're doing our best to make trivia, as you can see. That's our, that's our goal.

[Paul Merriman]

Yeah, I'll be ready next time.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Is there a way to get ready? I don't know. Do you limber up like third? You got to play for Paula then instead, apparently. But Paula's the winner today, so we don't want to focus on that.

[Jesse Kramer]

Yes.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What's going on at Afford Anything?

[Paula Pant]

I can't believe I'm tied with Jesse is where I'm rarefied air. Yes.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We're three months in and she's still tied with Jesse.

[Paula Pant]

Yes.

[Jesse Kramer]

I think, Paula, I've got an asterisk next to mine. You don't. So you actually might be ahead.

[Paula Pant]

Wow. Wow.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That is true. That is.

[Paula Pant]

The heavens have shifted. Up is down. Black is white, blue is red.

[Doug]

Cats are living with dogs.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, seriously. Chaos, Chaos, chaos, chaos.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Hey, Paula, what's going on at Afford

[Paula Pant]

on the Afford Anything? That was, that was me really drawing it out because I don't know what's happening on the Afford Anything podcast.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, you and I are answering questions.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, exactly.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We're great at it. It's so fun.

[Paula Pant]

We're great at it. We answer lots.

[Doug]

We.

[Paula Pant]

Every Tuesday. Every Tuesday you join me on the podcast and we answer audience questions. And let me take a look right now at the editorial calendar. Let's see what's coming up in the. The not too distant sometime. We've got. Let's see. Oh, the, the suspense. The suspense. Look at how unchanged.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Would you like me to ask Jesse Kramer what's going on while you look this up?

[Paula Pant]

We've got Neil Iyer. Neil Iyer is going to be a guest on the show. He deals with like behavioral finance, like

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

the psychology, a lot of stuff we talked about today.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, exactly. So he talks about how your beliefs really shape your reality. You know, rather than reality shaping your beliefs, your beliefs shape your reality. But he talks about that in a not woo woo way. He talks about it in a very research backed, data driven, scientifically grounded way.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's fabulous. And that's at Afford Anything. We're finer podcast are found.

[Paula Pant]

We are the finest.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Jesse Kramer, thanks for hanging out again, my friend.

[Jesse Kramer]

Awesome. This is so much fun.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What is going on at personal finance for long term investors?

[Jesse Kramer]

Great question. What is today, Joe? What day is today?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I can't believe you don't have your calendar open. You have no idea what day today might be. It's the 27th. Duh.

[Jesse Kramer]

Is it okay, it's the 27th. So we just released an. Oh, an episode, I think all about Monte Carlo simulation, which is kind of fun. A deep dive into how Monte Carlo works.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Going to the casino.

[Jesse Kramer]

We're going to the casino how it works. But more importantly, as a potential retiree, how to use the tool properly, how to, how to not draw too many wild conclusions from it. But you know how to use it to help plan for your Retirement.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Can you tell our new stackers briefly what a Monte Carlo simulation even is?

[Jesse Kramer]

Sure. So in the context of retirement planning, this whole idea is that the future of the market's performance or your portfolio performance is pretty unknown. And certain potential futures, you could be, you know, you'll be fine, you'll be making tons of money, you'll have nothing to worry about. But there are other potential futures where maybe it would put your particular retirement plan under some stress. And so the idea is that the Monte Carlo simulation kind of randomizes or adds some sort of variation or volatility into the future market performance. It does that 100 a thousand, 10,000 different times. So you get all these kind of potential futures that your financial plan might live through. And then some of them succeed wildly, some of them fail, some of them barely make it. And the results allow you to kind of analyze what type of market conditions might put you under some financial stress. And then potentially what you might be able to change today to better protect yourself from that stress. That's how I would describe it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, it's pretty neat. It's pretty fun. And a problem I find newbies have with Monte Carlo is they want it to be 100% success all the time. And all 75% success rate means is that 75% of the outcomes it looked at you were good. Which means 25 of the time you need to do more planning. And if you know that going in, it doesn't mean you can't retire. It means that, you know, your expectation for, for maybe having to tweak it a little bit.

[Jesse Kramer]

That's exactly right. And now that, now that you've said that, Joe, I don't think anybody really needs to go listen to my episode. You heard it here, you heard it here first.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

As usual, Jesse's like, shut up, Joe. Taking all that. And that is it personal finance for long term investors. Also where finer podcasts are found. Hey, thanks to everybody who hung out with us today. We had lots of trouble with YouTube interconnecting. I'm so happy that you guys stayed and played with us. I could barely see the comments, but the ones that I saw were hilarious. I wish we could have put them on screen, but unfortunately technology not playing the game. But if you want to hang out with us, please do so. We're here fairly reliably Monday afternoons and that's at the Stacking Benjamin's YouTube channel. Just subscribe and you will get an alert then on your device that shows when we go live. That's going to do it for today, except for one question, which is this. Doug, what should we have learned on today's show?

[Doug]

Well, Joe, first, don't forget what revered elder statesman Paul Merriman said every person should expect that. Tomorrow starts the the worst bear market in history. Your portfolio should be built to withstand that, and so should your intestinal fortitude. Also, he said, make sure you've got fresh batteries in your smoke detectors. Thanks, dad. Second, remember what Paula said about the hot, hot, sweaty, physically fit bad boy stock driving around in that red Camaro?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Wait, what?

[Doug]

I mean, sure, they're. They're great for a little while, but pretty soon, just like all the others before them, they get bored with you and they dump you while you're eating some crappy 2 for 20 meal deal at a Chili's out by the mall. Next thing you know, you're bumming a ride home off the career dishwasher when his shift is over.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Sounds like Doug needs a therapist.

[Doug]

Sorry, I mean, just. I'm guessing I was just filling in the blanks between the lines of what Paula was trying to say. But the big lesson. Start your money journey on the right foot and sell shout outs. I'm sure those $50 checks are about to start rolling in any minute. Any. Any minute. Just gonna. We've been having a lot of tech issues today. Let me hit refresh on my browser. I mean, they gotta like any minute, right? They're gonna start coming. Something's wrong with my computer. Hey, Ma, check the Internet. This show is the property of SP Podcast, LLC, Copyright 2026 and is created by Josal Sehai. You'll find out about our awesome [e-mail] along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. And oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin show.